Families weighing school choice in New Hampshire have five established paths: Education Freedom Accounts, which now cover any school-age child regardless of family income; public charter schools open to any resident student; town tuitioning in the roughly 50 communities without their own public schools at some grade levels; business-funded Education Tax Credit scholarships for lower-income families; and homeschooling under a notification-and-evaluation framework. A sixth option, open enrollment across public district lines, exists in limited form after an October 2025 state Supreme Court ruling but failed to expand in the 2026 legislative session.
Each program has its own eligibility rules, funding source, and application process. Here is how each one works for a family deciding where to send a child.
Education Freedom Accounts
The Education Freedom Account program is the state’s largest and most flexible choice program. It launched in 2021 with income limits, and in June 2025 Governor Kelly Ayotte signed Senate Bill 295 opening it to every school-age child in New Hampshire. For the 2025â2026 school year, 10,510 students are enrolled, nearly double the prior year’s 5,765.
An EFA deposits the state per-pupil adequacy grant into a managed account the family can spend on approved educational costs. The average grant this year is $4,911 per student. Families earning under 350 percent of the federal poverty level, students with disabilities, and English language learners qualify for additional “differentiated aid” that raises the grant.
Who Can Apply
Any New Hampshire family with a school-age child is now eligible. The 2025 expansion imposed a cap of 10,000 new students per year for families above 350 percent of the federal poverty level, with language to raise the cap automatically if it is reached.
How to Apply and What the Money Covers
The program is administered by the Children’s Scholarship Fund New Hampshire, a nonprofit affiliated with a New York-based organization, not by a state agency. Families apply through CSFNH. Once accepted, parents select providers from a CSFNH-approved list and submit invoices for reimbursement from the managed account.
Eligible expenses are broad and include:
- Private school tuition
- Online learning programs
- Tutoring
- Textbooks and curriculum materials
- Educational software and technology
- Standardized testing fees
- Occupational and speech therapy
- School uniforms
- Transportation costs
A student receiving an EFA is not barred from returning to public school. Participation is a family choice, and most current recipients were already in private or home education before the grant: state data show roughly 96.7 percent of 2025â2026 EFA students were enrolled in private or home programs before applying.
Public Charter Schools
New Hampshire’s public charter schools are tuition-free and open to any resident student, with admission by lottery when applications exceed seats. The state legalized charters in 1995, and a 2003 amendment lets the State Board of Education authorize them directly without local school board approval. As of early 2025, 32 charter schools were operating and enrolled 6,020 students, with five more scheduled to open in fall 2025 and three in the pipeline for 2026.
Programs vary widely. The largest schools include the Academy for Science and Design in Nashua (672 students), The Founders Academy in Manchester (431), and Windham Academy (410). Seven of the 32 operating schools focus on at-risk students.
Charters run on five-year terms and are subject to revocation for fiscal mismanagement or failure to meet the academic benchmarks written into their charter contracts. The Department of Education audits each charter at least once every three years. In fiscal year 2023, the average per-pupil cost at a charter school was $10,570, compared with $20,323 at a traditional public school.
Town Tuitioning
Town tuitioning is the oldest school choice mechanism in New Hampshire. Roughly 50 towns in the state lack public schools for at least some grade levels. In those communities, the district pays tuition for resident students to attend a public or private school of the parents’ choice. Families can pay the difference if they select a more expensive school, and districts typically cap the tuition amount they will cover.
Religious schools are now included. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue held that states cannot exclude religious schools from publicly funded private school choice programs, the New Hampshire Legislature removed the sectarian restriction from the tuitioning statute, and the governor signed the corrective legislation.
In practice, most tuitioning towns contract with one or two nearby schools for all their students. A handful spread their students more widely. Croydon, for instance, currently sends roughly 60 students to six different schools, four public and two private.
Education Tax Credit Scholarships
The Education Tax Credit program, established by Senate Bill 372 in 2012, is a smaller, business-funded scholarship for lower-income families. Businesses donate to approved scholarship organizations and receive a tax credit equal to 85 percent of their contribution against the Business Profits Tax, Business Enterprise Tax, or Interest and Dividends Tax. The program has a $5.1 million annual cap and currently serves 768 students, less than 1 percent of the state’s Kâ12 population.
Scholarships are limited to families earning under 300 percent of the federal poverty level. At least 40 percent of awards must go to students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. For the 2025â2026 school year, the standard scholarship cap is $3,405, with a $5,958.75 cap for students with special needs.
Because the award is modest, families often combine a tax-credit scholarship with other aid from the private or religious school they attend. Applications go through approved scholarship organizations rather than the state.
Homeschooling
Homeschooling in New Hampshire runs on a notification system rather than approval. A parent must file a one-time notification with a participating agency, which can be the state education commissioner, a local superintendent, or a nonpublic school principal, within five business days of starting instruction.
Required subjects are science, mathematics, language, government, history, health, reading, writing, spelling, the history of the New Hampshire and United States constitutions, and exposure to art and music. Parents must keep a portfolio of reading logs, writing samples, and creative materials for two years, and conduct an annual evaluation of student progress. The evaluation can take several forms, including a review by a certified teacher or a standardized test. Results stay with the family and are not submitted to the state.
This framework may change. In 2026, the Legislature advanced House Bill 1268, the Home Education Freedom Act, which would make the notification requirement and annual evaluations optional, exempt homeschooled students from child labor hour restrictions, and prohibit the Division for Children, Youth, and Families from treating a child’s homeschool status or lack of records as an indicator of educational neglect. The Senate passed the bill in May 2026. A separate measure moving at the same time would eliminate notification, record-keeping, and evaluation requirements for all homeschooling families; it was still in negotiation as of mid-2026.
Open Enrollment Between Public Districts
New Hampshire does not currently have a statewide open enrollment system letting any public school student attend any district. What exists is a narrower right created by RSA chapter 194-D and clarified by the state Supreme Court in October 2025.
In Appeal of Pittsfield School District, the court held that when a receiving district adopts open enrollment under RSA 194-D, the sending district must pay tuition for its resident students who choose to attend, even if the sending district itself never voted to participate. The Pittsfield district had refused to pay for students attending the neighboring Prospect Mountain district, and the court ruled against it.
The ruling set off local pushback. By March 2026, more than 100 communities had voted to establish local policies limiting or prohibiting students from enrolling in or leaving their districts. The Legislature’s main attempt to override those restrictions, House Bill 751, went through several versions during the 2026 session, including a pilot capped at 500 students in the first year. A companion bill, SB 101, failed in the House 168 to 184 after 21 Republicans joined Democrats in opposition. On June 4, 2026, the Senate tabled HB 751 without discussion, and Governor Ayotte called the bill “not ready for prime time.” The result: whether a family can cross district lines depends on whether the receiving district has adopted an open enrollment policy under RSA 194-D, and on any local restrictions the sending community has passed.
A related measure that did move, HB 1573, passed the Senate in May 2026 and lets parents appeal “manifest educational hardship” cases to the State Board of Education, stripping receiving schools of the ability to refuse transfer students based on capacity or disciplinary history.
Choosing Among the Options
The right program depends on the family’s situation. A student already in private school or being homeschooled is the typical EFA recipient and gets the broadest expense coverage. A family seeking a tuition-free public alternative with a specific academic focus is a candidate for a charter school and should apply by the school’s lottery deadline. A family living in one of the roughly 50 tuitioning towns already has a built-in subsidy for the public or private school of their choice, up to the district’s tuition cap. A lower-income family bound for a private school that participates in the Education Tax Credit program may qualify for a scholarship through an approved scholarship organization. Families planning to homeschool should file notification within five business days of starting instruction and keep the required portfolio, pending the outcome of the deregulation bills moving in 2026.
Public district enrollment outside the home town remains the hardest path. Unless the receiving district has adopted an open enrollment policy under RSA 194-D or the family qualifies for a manifest educational hardship transfer, a cross-district move still requires cooperation from both districts.